Not happy with board

Editor,
While I do respect the hospital board’s authority to hire and fire the CEO, since they are either elected and not qualified to run the day-to-day operations of a hospital with a $130 million annual budget, I do question their sensibility in bypassing and undermining the authority of the CEO by directly contracting with senior administration.  

They need to give directions to the CEO in keeping with wishes and needs of the community and hold him/her accountable to the highest performance standards. All the employees, including senior administration, must report to CEO.

Our hospital faces severe fiscal challenges over next few years and is singularly ill-equipped to deal with all the revolutionary changes in healthcare that are already unleashed. Over the last few years, the hospital board has ratified decisions to disband home health, rural health clinic and managed care organization. They have tried to close eye surgery, turned down cardiac Cath Lab and have steadily increased charges to exorbitant levels, creating tremendous out-migration of privately insured district residents.

We have an ineffective new-physician recruitment program, we expend no efforts at physician retention and have added no new services, except unneeded real estate. They have made decisions without input from medical staff. We have excessive numbers of administrative staff, managers and directors at the expense of rank and file workers.

The board has created a tremendous turmoil within the hospital and the community, by summarily terminating the current CEO, which will lead to another lengthy and expensive search for his replacement. And what happens if they do not like him/her after one year — another $400K severance pay and a few more years of wasted precious time that we can ill afford.

I wonder if they even have the insight that they are hurting our hospital and local community. Is this their way of putting care back into healthcare?

Rakesh Jindal, MD
Porterville